The other Side
by SoulBlack
Summary: The Hologram Summer has ended, and the Night of Wallachia will be gone for some time. When White Len goes into the human world to start anew and find a place to fit in, but things don't go exactly as planned, and Nanaya doesn't help at all either. Nanaya X White Len. Post-Actress Again AU.
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

"Curses" Was all he managed to mutter.

A single line of blood dripped from his forehead. The red, plasmatic liquid vigorously pouring out of his skull, and he made no effort to stop it. Even though his ears ringed in a numbing, deafening beep, it somehow helped him to keep his focus. The only real bother were the drowsiness and cold sweat permeating his suit. Pulling his hair, longer than what it had ever been, out of his eyes, he gazed with fierce eyes at his target.

There wouldn't be failure. Not this time. Not again.

With only a cold glare he analyzed every single movement. Each millimeter the fingers moved, every sway of their hair, the whole intent behind every single, simplest gesture. Nothing was escaping him. He could only tighten the grip against his final weapon, the one which was his last stronghold, resource, and amusingly, hope.

_Hope…_

He had never really had space in his vocabulary for such word. He neither had a reason to use it, nor think about it…

…until now.

Because right now, hoping was the only thing he could do, the only thing he could cling upon. He could rely on his skill, he could count on his abilities, but to _depend_ on that a certain principle… he could only cling on the dim, absurd idea of _hope_.

There was no desperation, no ecstasy, not the hexing sensation of desire. Just… _hope_.

And it wasn't even hope about the outcome of this battle. It neither was the hope of being to connect the fatal strike, of _murdering_ the opponent right in front of him, or being killed in return.

It was the hope of _seeing her again_, of just being able to _see her face again_. It would not matter what she had to say to him, it wouldn't matter if she didn't want to see him. He just wanted to see her _once more_.

He had no time for auto-analysis. He had no room to play psychiatrist for his own twisted mind right now. He couldn't afford to explain those thoughts that crossed his mind. He was unable to erase them, and could only crush his way forward with them in heart and mind.

…And it certainly felt refreshing to have them right now, as stupid as that may sound. He felt _glad_ to have those thoughts with him.

Once upon a time, life or death didn't matter to him.

_Once_ upon a time.


	2. Ch1: Bleak Normality

**Chapter 1: Bleak Normality**

She had never been the patient type, he and I could promise and reassure.

Patience is a virtue not everyone has, and those who lack it do have a hard time dealing with the uneasiness that comes when something unexpected happens. Normality is a thing that can be disrupted in a fleeting moment. The thing with normality is that it quickly becomes something familiar; it would be paradoxical if it didn't. Even though "normality" can differ from person, normality can be understood as your daily life as a whole. Waking up at the same hour, taking the same road to work, spend 8 hours in front of a computer, typing words and numbers out of pure custom without really putting soul into it, leaving the building at the same time to go for the same drink at the same bar, every day, every night without awareness of the realization of the act. It becomes a _routine_, and eventually, it consumes your life.

Well, the average middle-class city man would do that, actually. Rinse and repeat, the middle man falls into repetition, a repetition that is incrusted upon their minds, a repetition that becomes normality, normality that becomes _familiar_, in a familiarity that numbs your senses into the cycle that is a _daily life_.

Some say that daily life is boring, but I think that they say so because they're missing the greatest point in there: a daily life is based on their concept of "normal".

I say it because "normal" people lead "normal" lives, with "normal" jobs, "normal" families and "normal" activities. But again, "normal" is understood as what is accepted by the majority of society.

Urk, society is at it again.

Before I fall into repetition or this drags on any longer, Normality is just a matter of perspective.

And I say it because _she_ doesn't have patience, and _her_ sense of normality can be easily disrupted.

She wouldn't be normal by the standard standards, if you may know what I'm talking about. Well, my own standards are actually a wee bit off the standard standards.

I may not be making any sense, so let's just say this is a _weird_ girl.

She's a weird girl with a weird story and weird antics behind her. Though, we can both agree that patience isn't her forte, we and him. Even though, they still had a sense of normality. It doesn't matter how others viewed it, for _them_ their normality was fine.

Yet again, normality can be disrupted.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"_What is done out of Love is beyond Good and Evil"__  
__―__Friedrich Nietzsche__,__Beyond Good and Evil._

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Another day had passed, and he still hadn't returned. She sighed with impatience.

It was not funny. Though she didn't expect it to be anyways.

She took a glance at the timer and resigned from pulling out another one from the oven.

The aroma permeating the kitchen was intoxicating. The smell of flour, whipped cream, cherries and all kinds of sweet things kept Len from being distracted. She made the effort, though still was unable to keep her mind from drifting off. She wasn't really in the mood for work, but it was the only way to keep her mind busy and pass the time without starting to pull her hair off one by one until she ended bald.

The steel oven stood out in all its grey metallic glory on the white and cream kitchen. The bags of flour, jars of jam, cans of whipped cream, packages of dried fruit and so on laid messily all around the tables and cabinets of the small kitchen. The sight was _normal_, messy but_ normal_: So _normal_ that it was driving her on the edge.

With the ping of the timer above the oven, Len was notified that it was ready. She opened the oven to be greeted with warm steam, and the smell of a perfectly made cake base.

"Nozomi-san, its ready" Len called as she took out with feline grace the cake out of the oven with a pair of puffy mitts on her hands and presented it to the other girl who worked beside her.

"Thank you, Len-chan" The girl known as Nozomi responded and accepted it. Placing it on the central table, Nozomi began her part on the job.

Len watched with dreamy eyes. Nozomi took the chocolate cover and cherries and skillfully finished the cake in record time.

"You've been spacing out quite a bit recently, Len-chan" The other girl, Fumino, deadpanned.

"W-what?" Len clumped ungainly as she was pulled back into earth.

"You have been staring off into the distance recently" Nozomi added with a slow, melodious voice. "Is something wrong?"

"O-Oh… really?" Len awkwardly responded, scratching the back of her head.

They were nice girls, but a little bit _too_ perceptive, something that Len found a bit unnerving. They didn't really meant harm, going as far as inviting her multiple times to hang out with them, and each time, she refused as politely as she could, that said, trying to keep her own ego as high as she could without being a total jerk.

Living in the human world was a lot harder than she had initially thought. If only it were that humans paid a _little_ less attention to her. It was strange how certain things always went unnoticed, and others _just couldn't_ remain with a low profile and suddenly everyone had their eyes on them. Len was one of those who tried to keep a low profile, but by some reason beyond her control, managed to keep an undesired level of attention around her. Thing was, that it was an attention she hated, but not because she had it, but because the _type_ of attention she caused.

She didn't particularly dislike any of the people she worked with, or any of the people she had been in need of meeting and deal with for that matter, but she still felt an awkward air whenever she became the center of attention. She had an ego, of course, one that was pretty darn _unique_, to say it in some way, one that, under other circumstances, wouldn't have made her stand where she was now.

She didn't hate her new position, but she didn't particularly like or love it either. It actually fell a little into the disinterest that came with establishing a _daily routine_.

And god, she was beginning to feel her ego kicking in.

It had been four years. Four years since the last Night of Wallachia, four years of great change for her, and almost three years of leaving the safety of her dream world, three years of a leaping into the human world and trying to adapt to it: Four rough but incredibly both _satisfying_ and _frustrating_ years.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

The last Night of Wallachia was also the last one for a couple hundreds of years.

Len didn't really know the details herself, but apparently, Tohno, the Ancestor and their friends managed to get rid of the Night of Wallachia for a good couple of hundreds of years. How they did it was beyond Len, but it indeed happen, something about some Osiris or something, apparently. Thing is, that Tohno and company effectively "disabled" the Night of Wallachia. The exact time it would last, she didn't know, nor care at this point, the only thing she knew that it would never be coming back anytime soon.

The first year without any incidents, she had decided to remain in her world, along with Nanaya. The two of them did what they did the last time before the Hologram Summer, and remained stationary for a little more than a year. Well, Len did at least.

Nanaya, on the other hand, didn't really find it interesting to remain on a field of eternal snow and decided to leave and go do whatever he wanted, like usual. Thing was, that there was really _nothing to do_ at all. So he decided he would travel. Ignoring his contract with Len, Nanaya went ahead and left for some unknown whereabouts.

And, Len also suffered a bit, though not only through Nanaya's leaving. The sudden "deactivation" of the Night of Wallachia had… some interesting side effects on her, effects she quickly noted with the passing of time after the Hologram Summer ended.

First of all, her already limited TATARI abilities became harder and harder to control, and also diminished greatly in a matter of weeks, and to top it, the amounts of prana she started needing from Nanaya became erratic. Some days she would need a high, constant supply of it, which would leave Nanaya unmovable, while others she would never even need a single drop for three days straight. However, as the first year rolled through, she found out that she needed very little prana at all if she didn't use anything but maintaining Nanaya's existence written into reality. She HAD to learn how to control her already weakened abilities to be able to do it, leaving her as fragile as a human girl, if not more.

And when Nanaya left for his own machinations, Len knew that she wouldn't be able to maintain her Summer Snow up if she didn't want to disappear. The darn pseudo-Reality Marble consumed a handful of prana, so keeping it up would prove fatal on the long run. The safety of both herself and Nanaya would be heavily compromised, so, without any other option, she took it upon herself to deal with the human world. Not that she had any other option left. No magic at all, nothing of the supernatural sort but her "link" with Nanaya, the only thing that gave her strength to keep moving.

The way she was reacting to the human world wasn't really helping too. She had to do whatever single thing as possible to save prana and remain as strong as she could. No fancy magic could be used. Instead, she opted to do something very unlike of her in a moment of desperation: She went as far as to use her "other" abilities, which said, were the dream manipulation ones, the ones that came from her other half, the black Len. She had a real hard time eating down her own ego to do it. But, desperate times require desperate acts, so it had been either that or disappearing.

The first times were a little short of disastrous, to be perfectly honest.

So she was now stuck in the human world, trying her darndest to stay alive. If one day it wasn't how her prana levels were going critically low, it would be getting the bread of each day.

The human world is a scary place.

And also, what confused her even more was how her physical body had been developing as well. She attributed it to Gaia being "confused" about her as a being, if that was even possible. With most of both her TATARI and general magical powers gone, she was left only as a former shell of what she once was, _almost_ human, summed to her existence as a _doppelganger_ of another being, must have made even Gaia confused as to just what she was now, hell, she couldn't even muster up a single snowflake in this state. The Night of Wallachia was by itself an event that gave contradictions a physical form and allowed them to exist in the world, summed with the abilities Len gained by herself and so on, should confuse anyone, being that it was an event that lasted only for a single night, but she managed to exist outside of it thanks to her state as a familiar… All that, or Gaia was just messing with her. Life _does_ have a certain fetish for abusing of one.

But, back on topic, she had actually _grown_ in the last years. She had freaking _grown_ a couple centimeters, even her hair was now reaching her waist level, and she hadn't made any effort to cut it yet, her arms and legs had also become skinnier and larger… and curves appeared, curves which she wasn't sure how the hell a woman could grow, but nonetheless, was grateful for. Although… Let's just say _one_ particular area didn't really grow as much.

…Hey, at least she had more than that snotty girl now. She had _something_ to feel proud of, on the very least.

But, she had indeed grown. Something she had not a single clue how was happening. The black Len remained loli for a good 5 centuries (or was it 7? or more? perhaps less?), and she was pretty sure the silent black cat would still be for a _long_ time. Though she wasn't really sure what had been of her recently, she hadn't actually stopped to wonder what any of those people were doing at all… She didn't even know where Nanaya went this time too. The differences between her and the black Len were becoming way too big. Even if they had never been the same person, theoretically speaking, now they couldn't even be called sisters. She now had the body of an 18 year old girl, although she still was a bit short and… _underdeveloped_ in some areas as well.

White Len had been building a life outside of Misaki Town. She had actually moved out of the place as soon as possible. She had no real memories to hold onto, nor any reason to stay, so she decided to also take her fair share of selfishness and watch the world. She never had a chance to do so, actually, so she would take it now to see the world.

…Though she didn't make it too far. The human world _is_ a scary place.

She only managed through a couple cities before being wasted. She had no money or destination, so she didn't really reach anywhere on the first place. She wasn't able to enjoy at full leisure the places she visited, and instead had to move along as need came. Funny thing to note is that she was completely _useless_ at everything she did.

Working on some really horrible jobs, Len did it all to stay alive. From working at construction sites to being the mascot of a restaurant, she failed on epic proportions at everything she did. She just couldn't adapt to the human world.

Many times she despaired, but firmly (in the fashion of a hardhead, to be completely honest) she kept moving forward without faltering… although her empty stomach did prove a nuisance most of the time.

Then, there was the Stray Cats bakery.

The place was run by an airheaded woman who loved adventures, and was never at home. She somehow reminded Len of Nanaya; always fooling around, and leaving everyone else behind. Because the woman, Otome Tsuzuki, always went all around the world while leaving her little brother to take care of the place. Well, he and some other girls to be perfectly honest.

Len had never really met Otome Tsuzuki in person, so she was left only with her imagination and the vague information that came from her little brother and the other girls working at the bakery. But they did tell her their story: They were orphans. Takumi, after running away from the orphanage, was taken in by Otome, Fumino had always been close to Takumi, so she stuck around him all the time, and Nozomi was taken in by Takumi (and later officially by Otome).

For someone like Len, who had never really interaction with anyone on the outside world, when she was offered a place at the Stray Cats, she really had no idea what to say.

"But I don't know how to bake a cake"

"Don't worry, we'll teach you"

"But I'll be in the way"

"That's not a problem"

On the human world, Len HAD to gulp down her ego. She could brag all she wanted when it was all about the Night of Wallachia or Hologram Summer, but here and now, with the cruel, human world, she had no room for being obnoxious. The world _is_ a scary place. And without her magic to back her up, having to tackle it as any other human being… was overwhelming. Back there it was all about saving up prana and going up against anyone she wanted. But here and now, she was as powerless and fragile as any other human girl with no magical capacities whatsoever.

She hated it.

She hated being powerless. She hated being useless.

But overall, she couldn't understand the _kindness_ of humans.

That she, a complete stranger, who once hated humanity, was given a place to stay, a decent job to labor (one that she very early on learned to appreciate), and a sense of _normality_.

The normality of the _simple_, _fragile humans_.

Looking back, going into a blind fight against Roa seemed so much simpler than having to work every day and making room for the bills, clothing, and hoping to stay alive _one more day_.

…Is this what humans call _life_? She wondered.

_She hated being powerless, but she learned to live with it._

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"Four years already…" Len muttered.

The confused looks of her workmates only served to make her feel even more out of place.

"Sorry, just rambling aloud"

With the alarm of the 9:30 of the night going off, everyone started their preparations to go home.

The same idle conversations that she had grown to expect, the same good-byes and same faces she had grown so accustomed to see… Had all of this really become _this_ normal for her to live in?

"See you tomorrow" Len always was the last one to leave.

She took the apron off her chest and the hat that covered her pointy ears. Her ears hadn't been affected in all these years and remained as long and pointy as ever, and it was something which was really uncomfortable. She had to wear hats that covered them all the time unless she wanted to attract unwanted attention. She had even learned a spell that changed their appearance, but since she never really had prana to spare, she had to refrain from using it unless that it was a dire emergency. Fortunately for her, she hadn't had the need to use it ever since she learned it, since she would always have her ears covered. When she wasn't working, she would be at her room, and she didn't really go outside either. Even though she was practically living at the Stray Cats, she still reserved herself from fully associating with humans.

Closing herself the shop, Len departed for her room in the back. She was living with Takumi and Nozomi. Even though she had wanted it to be temporal, she still couldn't afford a place of her own. Though she worked part-time at the Stray Cats, the income wasn't enough for her to make it on her own, so she instead opted to find multiple jobs. It was a tiring routine. She woke up early in the morning- or better said, was woken up by her alarm and went to make deliveries on that darned contraption known as a motorcycle for a local delivery company, then had to enter on the morning shift as an auxiliary cook on a restaurant, to leave on the afternoon to open up and set the Stray Cats until late night. All that and she still had to perform some dream manipulation every now and then.

"You work very hard, Nanaya-san" Takumi said, also putting his apron off.

"I'm fine, thanks" Len responded. "See you tomorrow"

Nanaya… She had decided to adopt the surname for the human world. She couldn't be only called "Len", after all. So, in a somewhat rushed decision, she decided to give herself that surname on the human world.

A part of her still felt a little awkward from it.

She still lacked something, or rather, _someone_ before she could fully take onto the human world. That also was another one of the reasons she had kept an infernal rhythm on these last years.

She could feel through their connection that Nanaya was still alive and kicking, but she just couldn't bring herself to pinpoint his location. Of all the abilities that Len still had, this was the only one which remained active, and that was because of the contract between the two.

Like always, Nanaya had gone ahead on his own, and it bothered Len more than it should.

Another day went by, another day very similar to these of the last years, another slow, uneventful day.

"Nanaya… Just where are you?"

Little did she know, that the day Nanaya was coming was closing by, and with it, the return of trouble, trouble she wasn't sure she wanted to face.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

**A/N: I know that perhaps I'm stretching out too far with Len's situation of living in the human world. Perhaps I even messed and broke a whole lot of principles behind Nasuverse logic/standards. But I just couldn't find a proper scenario for this fanfic without having Len go through all this stuff, so deal with my antics.**

**And also, I'll be referencing and actually using multiple manga/animes along the course of this fanfic, with the case of this chapter being Mayoi Neko Overrun! and I'm doing it mainly for 2 reasons: the first being that I do want to use and make references to a lot of the material I like and have read, and second, because that this fanfic focuses more on other aspects rather than Nasu-ish stuff of great plots with supernatural characters; I'm going more for a more light-hearted fic that focuses more on Nanaya and Len as individuals and full-fledged characters, instead of the joke/unimportant characters that they make them to be in Melty Blood/Tsukihime canon. It will sometimes be light-hearted comedy, fluffy romance, and sometimes it will be serious. But I don't want this to be an overly dramatic job.**

**All in all, I hope you can deal with me. Constructive criticism will be greatly appreciated.**


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